Archive for Writing
This week’s Rumor Tuesday features little-known facts about the Olympics. Who says I can’t keep up with current events?
Rumor has it… At the first modern Olympics games in 1896 held in Athens, the IOC had waited until only the day before the opening ceremonies to announce that the competitions would not be held in the nude as they had been in the ancient Olympics.
Rumor has it… The International Olympics Committee has never had a medal-winner among its members.
Rumor has it… The torch relay at the 2010 Winter Olympics is set to be the longest relay in Olympic history.
Rumor has it… The words in the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Latin meaning “Faster, Higher, Stronger”) have been used as model names for cars, computers, and skateboards.
Rumor has it… 2010 will be the last year for the classic three-tiered rostrum for medal award presentations. All future Olympics will use a single-levelled platform so as not to raise any one competitor above another during the ceremony.
Rumor has it… The mascots for the 2010 Winter Olympics are Miga (a mythical sea bear) and Quatchi (Sasquatch).
Rumor has it… In the entire history of the Olympics, there have been three non-concurrent events known as curling. One is the now-familiar sport using heavy stones on ice. The others were Summer Olympic events: one being a form of lawn tennis using a soft cloth ball stuffed with feathers (1896-1912) and the other being a demonstration event similar to lacrosse combined with bocci (1930-1934).
Rumor has it… Olympic host cities must pass strenuous tests from the IOC regarding air and water quality, siesmic stability, and average intelligence.
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Today’s link is a fun one for science fiction fans. Welcome to the blog of Fred Pohl entitled The Way The future Was. This was the title of his very excellent memoir, and now it’s a blog. This is some pretty interesting reading from one of the original Futurians.
Check it out.
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This week’s myserious mis-delivered mail features a linen white business envelope with a folded letter within. There are some adhesive marks on the back which suggest that it may have once been attached to a larger package. No package exists here… just the letter. It reads:
Dear Dr. Still,
Several years ago, a member of our editorial board retained you as a consulting reader for our publishing house. Books to be sent to you would be of mystical or supernatural themes, and over the years we have received many submissions which have been turned down without any need for outside consultation. We’ve received a trio of books recently, however, which we are considering publishing if for no other reason than the recent resurgence in interest in the supernatural. the three books we would like you to review for us are:
Ghost Hoses of New England by Sarah Waterstone. At first we thought it might have been a typo and the author had meant to print houses, but upon review–the author truly intended to mean hoses. The author recounts nearly a hundred unlikely tales of haunted fire hoses, garden hoses, watering hoses, industrial hoses, and even emergency medical hoses. The author covers the several types of hoses being haunted: nylon, rubber, flexible metal sheathing, hydraulic, etc. The book sounds amusing at first, but quickly grows tired as the stories tend to have very little to do with actual hauntings and more with the history of hoses in New England.
Ghost Houses of New England by Bradford Fourly. This seems more like what we’re looking for, but rather than being a collection of stories regarding haunted houses in New England, it’s more about houses which are themselves ghosts. To whit, a house that no longer exists except in some ethereal place of existence. At first this sounds very interesting, but the stories all seem to be related by various patrons of bars and saloons. The stories are transcribed verbatim, so the narratives are difficult to follow and trail off-topic into rants about the government, ex-wives, ex-husbands, and requests for small loans. The interview often ends when the storyteller is rebuffed.
Ghost Hauntings of Nude England by Chauncey Bottomwell. It’s exactly what you expect it to be and really needs no further commentary from us. Normally we wouldn’t consider publishing a book of this nature, but we would like your input to determine if there are perhaps deeper, more meaningful layers to this book.
Finally, you may notice certain similarities in style and titling in these three books. Although each book is purported to be written by a different author, and each submission was sent from a different location (Templar, AZ, Providence, RI, and Exeter, UK specifically), we suspect there may be only one author involved. We have not decided yet if this will affect our editorial decisions, but we felt we should let you know that we are aware of the possibility of a single author.
We’re looking forward to your timely input. Please submit an invoice for your consultation services to our accounts department.
Yours sincerely,
Ike Mays
Acquisitions Editor
Four Stone Books
Next up is the familiar rag-papered, crimson inked note. Today’s missive reads:
We are making wagers as to the outcome of the events currently occurring beyond the lights.
When the lights go out, it will be time to pay up.
We await your signal.
(signed)
Unsigned
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Today’s link goes to the webcomic Multiplex - a comic about life at a movie theater. It’s a bunch of college-aged kids with crappy theater jobs, but there are some amusing comments on movies and movie-going. It’s not just a straight gag strip, though. There’s story and character development going on, so you will want to read through the archives to maximize the enjoyment of the strip.
Cheers!
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Today’s Rumor Tuesday takes a look at the ever-popular lottery system in the United States. Welcome to it. Today’s winning numbers are…
Rumor has it… No lottery number in the US has been drawn in which, when all of the numbers are added up, it has equaled a prime number.
Rumor has it… While it’s commonly believed that lottery jackpot winners tend to lose their new-found fortunes quickly, actual studies show most lottery winners not only retain most of their winnings, but have often invested them and doubled or tripled those winnings within five years.
Rumor has it… Hawaii is the only state in the US not to have a state-sponsored lottery.
Rumor has it… The first modern state-level lottery in the U.S. was established in Puerto Rico in 1934.
Rumor has it… More winning lottery jackpot tickets have been purchased in towns or cities named after American presidents than any other.
Rumor has it… Shirley Jackon’s “The Lottery” was partly inspired by Jackson’s experiences living in North Bennington, Vermont. At the time of writing, Vermont had just licensed lottery sales to supermarkets.
Rumor has it… The Baseball scratch instant-win lottery ticket was introduced in the 1970s and is the longest continuously running scratch ticket in the US.
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Today’s link goes to the homepage for the Independent Spirit Awards now enjoying its 25th year. The nominees have been announced and it looks like a good year. Why should you visit? Because the Spirit Awards are like a fun version of the Oscars. Folks really let their hair down for this one. The Spirit Awards should get an award themselves.
Cheers!
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Today’s awkward mail sent to me, but not for me, comes first in a plain brown business envelope of the sort one doesn’t see much these days. Within on engraved business stationery is thus:
Dear Ms. Malin,
As you know, we pride ourselves on our ability to track down missing persons even on the most slim of clues and information. We believe in thinking outside the box, and always getting results. We admit, however, that your case has forced us to think so far outside the box that we are questioning some of our results and we request some further input from you in regards to your case.
You hired us to locate the father of you and your siblings–a man who disappeared without warning some twenty years ago. You also refused to provide us with any biographical or biological data, and insisted we search for your missing father on a philosophical basis alone. This is way outside the box. Still, we agreed to give it a go.
We hesitate to consider the following a “narrowing down” of the list of possibilities–but more the top ten in our list of potential targets. If you would be so kind as to look over this list and offer some insights, we would appreciate it and feel more confident that we could bring this case to a successful conclusion.
Our investigators have turned up the following possibilities:
- A Cape Verdean short order cook in Tulsa, Oklahoma who owns a complete set of the works of Albert Camus.
- A professor of secular humanism at Hofstra University.
- A chorus girl at an all-drag revue in Flint, Michigan.
- The Dalai Lama
- A diabetic Marist missionary in Burma.
- A retired cartoonist currently living in Cleveland, Ohio.
- An independent film actor and playwright from New York currently supplementing his income with TV commercials and animation voiceovers.
- Three Jewish comediens from Brownsville, New York
- A keyboard player in a German 80s-nostalgia techno band.
- The “missing” Lindbergh baby.
The list may seem a bit all over the map, but I think you’ll agree that they all share certain aspects from the philosophical profile you provided us.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Bernard and Vivian Jaffe
Interconnective Investigations
Next up is the ever-familiar folded note written with crimson ink upon a rag paper. It reads:
To Whom It May Concern:
Have you noticed the increasing number of bank robberies of late?
We have.
We’re just saying.
We await your signal.
(signed)
Unsigned
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Today’s link goes to The Three Stooges Official Website. I mean, come on! Does it get much better than that? Okay, I’m a Marx Bros. kind of guy, but easy fun entertainment is pretty much any Three Stooges short you could ever run across. And I’m a huge fan of the Stooge double-slap sound effect. If I thought it wouldn’t be socially awkward, I’d make it my ringtone.
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Humor, Letters, Movie review, Publishing, Writing | |1 Comment
Welcome back to Rumor Tuesday, your one-stop site for interesting factoids–or stuff that sounds like factoids. This week’s edition looks at language–a course of study I was once very devoted to back in my kollege daze. I still enjoy paging through books on the development of language. I heartily recommend Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue (July 1990) for an entertaining little book on the histories and vagaries of the English language.
Anyway, on to today’s “facts”:
The term “mano a mano” does not mean “man to man,” but rather “hand to hand” from the Latin word manu-, meaning hand.
Likewise, the phrase “to man a table” is not an inherently sexist term as it also has its roots in Latin from the verb manus(manere) meaning to handle.
It is commonly believed that the Inuit have over a hundred words for “snow.” In actuality they have very few words for snow, but many modifying additives to the base word forming over a hundred different compound words. The more sensationalist belief stems from an attempt by anthropologists to underscore how environment links to language.
The most common word on Earth is “a” and can mean anything from an indefinite article in English to a shade of blue-green in the Ainu language.
Tobogan has four different systems of writing depending on who the writer is: man, woman, priest, or merchant.
There are more tribal dialects known and spoken in the Amazon region of South America than there are currently existing tribes.
“Twin-speak,” the phenomenon in which twins grow up speaking a secret language, has elements (usually in adverb form) that are common among different sets of twins, even twins who have been raised in widely different parts of the world and among widely different base language groups. Some tests have found that twins raised in Scotland can communicate, limitedly, with twins raised in Burma.
The English language has exported more words to other languages than it has imported. 99% of all exported words came into existence within the past one hundred years and are technology-related. 90% of all imported words are either food, clothing or farming-related. Only a tenth of those were introduced within the past hundred years.
Languages that have no word for “zero” often also do not have a word for “white.”
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In keeping with the above theme, today’s link takes you to the Linguistics Society of America. If you’re an academic or a professional in the language field, it looks like a decent organization to belong to. If you’re an armchair enthusiast like myself, you’ll at least enjoy browsing some of the publications and links.
Cheers!
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It’s been a while since strange mail has arrived at my doorstep. Mail left with me, but not addressed to me. Rarely, in fact, is there any sensible address for addressee or returnee. So I read my strange mail. First up, in a plain white envelope coated lightly with dust:
Dear Dr. Henry Newage
In reviewing library records, I have discovered that you were lent fifteen books over ten years ago and have yet to return them. Accidents happen. Books borrowed are sometimes forgotten. What I found disturbing, however, is that the list of borrowed books matches exactly a list you had submitted to the library’s Board of Directors for removal on moral and scientific grounds. Apparently the previous head librarian was aware of this subterfuge, but chose to look the oher way. I, however, cannot.
I request the immediate return of these volumes in good condition. We will waive, this one time, late charges, but if any of the volumes are unrecoverable, we will be forced to escalate matters.
The volumes of note are:
The Habits and Practices of Highly Successful Rats by Deloris Pettigrew
Bag of Knobs and Boomsticks by Peter Mouse
A Secret History of the Western Swamp and Its Environs by Col. Gunther Montrose
Tuppence a Penny (or, How to Lose Your Shadow) by James Environs
Three Winds Come Through My Door (Poems) by Millicent Powers
Electricity In Ancient Mesopotamia by Halyard Mistral
Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia by Halyard Mistral
How To Sink a Ship by Gail Hops
The Daily Diet of the Aztec Merchant by Miles Killingly
Uncommon Sweetmeats by Chas. Kowalski
Five Bells, Four Sails, Three Souls by Frederick Hershey
One If By Land, Three If By Air: The Secret Air Force of the American Revolution by Henry H. Hyde
Living Like a Caveman by Durant Johnson
The Pornography of Easter Island by Kik Jones
The Twelves Days of Christmas by Fr. Francis Muldoon
In light of your past generosity to the library, the Board of Directors have asked me not to suspend your borrowing privelages. However, I have left strict instructions for you not to be lent anymore books from the children’s section, and have added a notation that before you are lent any books at all, that you see me so we can discuss this matter in person.
I look forward to that moment.
Your sincerely,
James Newage,
Head Librarian
King’s Hall Town Library
Often with my mis-delivered mail comes a note written in a reddish-brown ink upon a rough, rag paper. I have note seen these notes in a while and had hoped that the events of which they darkly hinted had been resolved.
Apparently I should be so lucky. Today’s message reads:
As events come to close, events come to unfold.
We are come enlightened. We are come confused.
As ever, we await your signal.
(signed)
Unisgned
Huh. Welcome to the return of the Friday mailbag.
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Today’s link goes to our new favorite coffeeshop here in West Warwick–Feels Like Ohm. It’s fairly new, having opened a few months after we moved here. Lots of comfy chairs. A Library full of fun books. Good coffee. Good snacks. Some great art on the walls. Occasional events. An all-round comfortable place to hang out and be a coffeeshop person. If you’re in the area, check it out.
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Humor, Letters, Writing | |1 Comment
Welcome to Friday, and welcome to the mailbag–which is actually a mailbox if you want to get technical about it. The first piece of mail comes in a plain white business envelope from a Manhattan address. It reads:
Dear Sir(s),
It has come to our attention here at Winter & Nash that you’ve been in contact with an individual who calls herself Dr. Petula Gregorii and who claims to be an investigator for an unnamed group of so-called scientists are studying certain phenomenon.
We feel it is our duty to warn you that Dr. Gregorii (if a doctor she truly is) is skilled charlatan of the highest order. Her unlikely claim to have discovered the full skeleton of a blue whale in the Himalayas was intriguing, but the later claim to have ruled the whale’s death as a result of impact from falling from a great height strikes us as entirely ludicrous and calls many of her other claims into question. Likewise, her outrageous claims and poor follow-up has become a source of embarassment for many of those who have previously funded her epeditions.
For instance:
Regarding her discovery of a species of 13-tentacled giant freshwater squid residing in the far depths of the Caspian Sea suggests a carelessness in observation and a tendency toward rushing to conclusions without proper scientific evidence. As to the the remains she claimed to have found, she blames the crew of the Baku with “poor preservation techniques by peasant fishermen” for its supposed dissolving.
We do not believe she has discovered a sequoia in western Canada that has grown, as she puts it “upside-down” with branches and leaves buried in the soil, and its roots sticking up into the air. The only proof she supplies are a few dirty and gnarled branches. There is no photographic or other proper evidence of her claim. Likewise…
Her claim that from the northern slope of Kilimanjaro, one can observe clouds passing behind the moon strikes us as the fanciful conclusions of careless observers who do not understand the basics of optical illusion.
She recently made headlines in certain newspapers not known for dedicated journalism in her announcement of a secluded valley in South America being discovered in which stone pylons depict such historic events as the moon landing, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the Reagan assasination attempt. The photos supplied in these newspaper stories are, without exception, blurred beyond belief and the occasional accompanying drawing looks to have been done by a five year old with palsy.
We understand that this Dr. Petula Gregorii is contacting your organization in hopes of securing funding for an expedition to the Australian outback where she claims she and her party expect to uncover the lost remains of several noted cases of missing persons (to whit: Amelia Earhart, Judge Force Crater, and Ambrose Bierce). We understand all too well how the potent comibination of Dr. Gregorii’s charm, charisma, and misguided devotion to her cause can aid in securing her funding (we ourselves contributed to the Himalayan expedition), which is why we here at Winter & Nash feel compelled to warn you.
Save yourself the grief and the funds and avoid any one-on-one meeting with Dr. Gregorii. Be unexpectedly out of town. Be out of the country, or better yet, off the continent. Get quarantined in a sickhouse. Get sent to prison. Believe us when you say you will lose less money in any of these ways than if you were to sit down with Dr. Gregorii and allow her to make her proposals to you in person.
Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you.
Your servants,
Winter & Nash
Next up is the old familiar rag paper with crimson ink note, but this week rather than being folded carefully, I found it crumpled and stuffed into the bottom of the mailbox. It reads:
To Whom It May Concern,
We are being followed. We are rushed in writing this, and likewise rushed in delivering.
We await your signal, but for God’s sake wait until whatever is following us grows bored or dies.
signed,
(unsigned)
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Into UFOs? Me neither, but you’d be surprised how many people are and how many sightings are reported each day. Check out the website of MUFON - the Mutual UFO Network who, for forty years, have been the central meeting point for UFO buffs the world over.
Enjoy, and keep watching the skies!
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Welcome to Friday and if it’s Friday then it’s time to see what mis-delivered mail the postman has left stuffed under the door. Daisy hates our mailman. I don’t know if it’s the way the air smells of sour milk when he arrives, or the sound of thunder, or the weird way he just keeps laughing and laughing, but something about him bugs her.
Anyway, this week we have an international envelope with international postage. I’d return it to the post office myself but I know it would be undeliverable given that the address is smudged beyond recognition. Let’s see…it reads:
My dear friend,
Forgive me for writing to you in English rather than in our beloved native tongue, but I find that here in America it is important to immerse oneself in the local language of Engish if one is to ge along with the more prickly natives. I very much look forward to your arrival and will meet you at the airport in Denver at the agreed upon date. Don’t pay too much attention to the postmark on this envelope. I tend to move around a lot as there is so much to see in this strange country. Yes, you’ve read the guidebooks, but trust me, Sorin, there is so much more to see that historic landmarks and shopping malls. I have become quite fascinated with the small towns and villages that one sometimes comes across. In a country of this size, and with a population so varied and large–well… here are some examples:
In the town of Humble, North Dakota there is not single soul under the age of 93. While the town’s one-room schoolhouse is a crumbled ruin, the cemetary is oddly overgrown and in a general state of disrepair. The local industry relies on a little bit of farming and the repair of old tube radios–owing to the presence of a large warehouse still reportedly full of old glass tubes.
In Wild Kilkenny, Tennessee, the entire town operates as if the AM and PM were reversed. Townspeople rise at around 7:00 PM, got to work for 9:00 PM, eat lunch between midnight and 1:00 AM, return home for 5:00 AM and eat dinner at around 6:30 AM whereupon they often retire at 10:00 AM–all seemingly oblivious to how the rest of the the timezone behaves. Children attend school in the evening. Church services are held on Sunday evenings. The town’s only gas station is open 24 hours, but their peak operating hours are not as they are in surrounding towns.
The phenomenon of an entire town behaving strangely is not unique to these first two examples. For instance, in Happenstance, Rhode Island, it is customary for all of the town’s citizenry to dress and behave as Hollywood stars of a bygone age. The town council is made up of Yul Brynner, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, John Wayne, and John Carradine. Local businesses are operated by the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, James Cagney, Carol Lombard, Louise Brooks, Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck. I met a set of triplets who all looked like Peter Sellers, albeit in different roles (Inspector Cluseau, Dr. Strangelove, and Chance the Gardener). Likewise, this practice includes children. The town’s playground looks like the shooting lot for The Little Rascals. High school students look like Andy Hardy and Judy Garland. No one seems to find it that unusual.
These are the most normal examples. I have heard rumors, mind you, of more sinister, mysterious and odd towns. The people of Umbra, Texas, for instance, supposedly cast no shadow. Sowet, Florida, is said to be home to a family of giants–nearly twice as large as the currently known tallest men and women. On the flip side, Popular, California is a very small town with a very small people–and very, very difficult to find. In Goodbye, Alaska everyone speaks backwards. In Lloyd, Wisconsin everyone wears Groucho glasses and walks with a stoop. They are known for their one-liners.
So when you visit America, leave your assumptions behind. Yes, New York City and Los Angeles are assaults to the senses. And I’m afraid Texas is worse than you’ve no doubt heard. This country will keep you guessing. When I find it difficult to sleep–which is often in this strange country–I think of home.
Transylvania was never like this!
Your friend abroad,
Lazlo Attila
Cottleston Pie, Wyoming
In addition to that little missive, we have the usual rag paper-crimson ink note. Now that I think about it–while it often arrives the same day as the weirder mail from the weirder mailman–I think these particular messages arrive via another carrier. Someone who works at night. Anyway, this week it reads:
To Whom It May Concern,
We’ve been giving each other haircuts.
Really, send the signal soon. I fear what will come next.
(signed)
unsigned
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In honor of the recent passing of Henry Gibson, today’s link takes you to a fan page for Roawn & Martin’s Laugh-In. Pictures, quotes, cast bios, FAQs, MP3s, and more. Lots of fun here, and well worth the visit.
As a bonus, here are some poems by Henry Gibson.
Cheers!
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The twelve original internet servers designated for ARPA-net across the United States are still in operation despite having half the processing power of an average modern desktop computer.
Speaking of which, the twelve servers are each named after the Signs of the Zodiac and hold Air Force ranks equivalent to captain. Despite holding Air Force ranks, only Captain Picses, the server located on Eielson Air Force Base outside of Fairbanks, has actually been on a plane. Each of the other servers were transported to their final destinations by truck.
The theoretical concept of the Internet has been described as early as the 1400s as a natural development of the moveable-type printing press.
Hypertext, which is a major component of HTML, was often bundled with early Macintosh computers as a multi-media tool. When the WWW was developed, Hypercard (which utilized the Hypertext language) essentially disappeared to all but Mac historians.
If every e-mail address in existence today were to send a one-word e-mail at exactly the same time (taking time zones into account), 99% of all processing servers across the world would suffer massive overheating resulting in a worldwide shut down of the Internet.
Kevin Steadier of Cleveland, Ohio locked himself in his room on October 31st, 2001 and lives solely through his internet connection–consulting for online security firms for money, pays all bills online, and makes all purchases, including groceries, via various web-based services. He married via webcast in 2005 a woman he met online but has yet to meet in person.
Search engines, prior to the WWW, were named after characters from Archie comics. The most popular ones were called Archie, Veronica, and Grundy.
The first transcontinental e-mail sent was from a Corporal Bell in Nevada to a Leiutenant Watson in London.
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Today’s link, as a nod to one of the above items, takes you to the Official Archie Comics website. Comics. News. Downloadable images. Character blogs… and so much more. Yeah, I’m an Archie fan. Yeah, I still buy those double-digests from the supermarket stands. Okay, I prefer the old school character designs and stories, but this site has ‘em all–old and new.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Comics, Humor, Rumor, Writing | Archie comics, Internet history|No Comments
Today’s mailbag contains, as usual, two items: the first being an old, aged browned envelope with a stamp that might be worth quite a bit of money were it actually be legible. Time was not its friend. Carefully, I extracted the letter within and it reads thusly:
Dear Mr. Briggs,
As requested, we have conducted a full-scale, premium historical search on your ancestor and namesake Montesque Forsyth Briggs, born 1620 in the village of Stub-On-The-Wye, Cornwall, England.
Following your suggestion, we found records of one M. Briggs boarding The Eye of Galway to France in autumn of 1641, but records indicate that the ship never reached Calais. The registery of sunken ships suggests it may have been hit by lightning and burned to the waterline in the middle of the Channel.
At your urging, we continued our search in Spain and found a Sr. M Brigges in the court of a minor coastal nobleman in 1651 serving as a master cartographer and keeper of the royal chest–an unheard of position for a foreigner. In 1652 the castle was looted by pirates and ignited. Brigges was not listed among the dead nor survivors.
In 1661 an MF Briggeks appears in the governor’s tax role in Curacao. He is listed as a ship outfitter and seller of optics. In 1662 Curucao was attacked by natives and burned to the ground.
According to tales told among the Seminole indian tribe, a white man named Monty Brights in 1671 (as determined by certain weather events) headed an expedition into the swamplands. He took with him several native guides and paid for their service with a merchant boat loaded with Eastern spices. The group was never heard from again, but stories persisted of strange explosions in the north.
Nothing can be found of Montesque F Briggs for a while, then in 1711 a whaling captain named Briggs arrived in New Bedford aboard The Maui with over 2,000 barrels of light whale oil. His crew numbered ten Japanese sailors who had been stranded in Saipan. Before off-loading the oil, The Maui went up in flames. Briggs and his sailors disappeared.
He shows up again in 1721 in the company of five “men of the East” in Humbold, Germany. He is captured as a spy. Due to his age, he is laced under house arrest at a local inn. The inn burns to the ground and only five skeletons are found in what was his quarters.
In 1741, an MF Brigges marries Dotty Park in Stub-On-The-Wye, Cornwall, England and they give birth a year later to Montesque Forsyth Briggs.
Records after this cease to exist. The church burned down.
Please note that we are not keeping any copy of these findings. All copies made during our research, and all originals, have been sent to your offices by special courier. Call us superstitious, but the number of fires associated with this research are disconcerting and… well, we’re not ones to take chances. I’m sure you understand.
Yours sincerely,
Keyes Historical Research
Chicago, Illinois
October 1871
Alongside this interesting tidbit of someone’s family history is the familiar rag paper note written with crimson-colored ink.
To Whom It May Concern:
Did you drop this?
If so, is this the signal?
We require clarification.
We require a signal.
We await your signal.
signed (unsigned)
Yeah.
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Today’s link visits ThePulp.Net a hub on all the info you’ll ever need on the great pulp magazines of days of yore. Don’t forget to check out the Doc Savage page. Why? Because Doc Savage rules.
Cheers!
Filed under: Blogosphere, Humor, Letters, Writing | |No Comments
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