Day 72: Play ‘Em In The Dark – The Banned Video Games

originally published March 12, 2012 Those who know me know that I am not easily shocked or offended. Perhaps this is because I’ve been desensitized by our permissive culture. Maybe it’s because I am more offensive than most anyone I know (I often tell jokes in which the punchline features the word ‘poop’, so yeah, […]

Day 70: Taking The Grand Tour – Uppercrust Or Bust

originally published March 10, 2012 I try to avoid too much repetition on this site. A couple days ago I took a meandering trip around northern New Zealand since, let’s face it, I’ll probably never do that in real life. So why am I travelling again today? Well, this ain’t your usual road trip. This […]

Day 66: The Big Six On Sixty-Six (Which Falls On The Sixth)

originally published March 6, 2012 In honor of the big six-six (Ms. Wiki must be an avid reader of this site – and really, why wouldn’t she be?), today’s hammer has thwacked the anvil of the Big Six. The Big Six refers to a number of things. Hopefully one or two of these will have […]

Day 58: The 1715 Jacobite Uprising, As Taught By An Awkward Substitute History Teacher Who Tries Too Hard

originally published February 27, 2012 Yo. My name is Mr. Leppswig, and I’ll be your substitute teacher today. Your teacher, Mrs. Griffle, asked me to lay it down for you all about the 1715 Jacobite Uprising in Great Britain. Will you pick it up? Alright, take out your notebooks. Last week you learned about the […]

Day 42: Samuel Crompton Wrecked My Scrotum!

originally published February 11, 2012 If you had been lucky enough to have lived a hundred years ago, you might have been able to snag (there may a pun here, I’m not entirely sure) a job using a mule spinner. This was a large piece of machinery, invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779-ish, that spun […]

Day 33: Milly Witkop Named Her Son ‘Fermin’, Yet She’s Actually Kind Of Cool

originally published February 2, 2012 To quote Wikipedia, that fair maiden who imbues me with a zesty yolk of seemingly meaningless information every day, Milly Witkop was “a Ukranian-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist.” So why should we care? In her lifetime, Milly was not only the reigning queen of Wrong-Place-Wrong-Time, she was also a pretty sharp rebellious […]

Day 18: The Man. The Myth. The Polypropylene Stacking Chair.

originally published January 18, 2012 This week, Americans took a day to commemorate one of the 20th century’s greatest humans. A man with a Dream. This is the story of another man, one who had a very different but arguably equally influential dream. The dream of a chair. Robin Day grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, […]

Day 5: Leckhampstead, Berkshire: Home Of The Gun-Clock & SuperSheep

originally published January 5, 2012 Today we journey across the ‘pond’, eat some ‘crisps’ then take a ‘lorry’ to a small ‘towne’ in southern England called Leckhampstead. Knowing those crazy Brits as I do (and I know three or four of them), they’ll pronounce it “Leckumsted”. It’s a beautiful language – I encourage everyone to […]