Have a drink with: John Colt Double-entry bookkeeping and axe murder Ask him about: packing advice You’ve probably heard of Samuel Colt, especially with gun rights so prominently in the news. Not only was Colt one of America’s most well-known gun manufacturers, he used the eager 19th century press to transform gun ownership from a…
Have a drink with: Louis Wain Auteur of psychedelic fractal cats Ask him about: cat memes “British cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.” – H.G. Wells If you love yourself a good cat photo, you can go ahead and thank Louis Wain. Up until the…
Have: a piece of cake. It’s….pleasantly aged? Ask: is it past its sell-by date? According to the BBC, last week a slice of cake from the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana sold for £1,850 at auction (about $2,500 USD). A piece of one of the couple’s twenty-three cakes, the slice had been…
Have a drink with: The Weller Brothers Blow, me bully boys, blow. Ask them about: Sugar and tea and rum Amidst other things people probably did not have on their bingo card in 2021 was the rise of Sea Chantey TikTok, but it’s been a strange year already, so why not? So the biggest question…
Have a drink with: You. Just have a drink. 2021’s off to a start, huh? Talk about: What wine goes with an attempted coup? Yesterday’s breach of the United States Capitol by a shaggy horde of insurrectionists egged on by the President of the United States was a historical anomaly of the worst kind: the…
Have a drink with: The Greely Expedition Survivor: Climate Research Edition Ask them about: Eating your shoes Hey folks! If you think you’ve got it bad having to stay home for Thanksgiving, well, at least you’re not marooned in the Arctic having to eat your shoes for dinner. My piece on the ill-fated Greely Arctic…
Raise a glass to: Democracy Vote! Vote! Vote! Look. A lot of people are saying a lot of things about Election Day. The results may take too long. Is absentee balloting trustworthy? And what the hell is up with the Electoral College? It is all very stressful. But these questions are not new, and there…
Have a drink with: Mark Twain & Henry David Thoreau Bring water, though. Ask them about: grilling tips One of the current West Coast wildfires made news recently when investigation revealed it had been started by smoke bombs at a California gender reveal party. The accident (not the first of its kind, following a similar…
Have a drink with: Postal Inspectors Don’t mess with the postal service. Ask them about: Snow, rain, gloom of night, Tommy guns When former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested recently on charges of defrauding donors to an online fundraising campaign known as “We Build the Wall,” it was by agents of the United States…
Have a drink with: Your Local Mountebank Healthcare! Fireworks! Toads! Ask him about: What ails you We’re all getting a lot of weird healthcare advice lately, and I admit that it’s hard to stomach the idea that our country, which vanquished polio and smallpox with scientific elbow grease, is entertaining the medical expertise of a…
