Skeleton Trivia for Thursday 2025-10-23
I hope they get someone really good to write my autobiography
Hiya Skeleton Crew,
Some good news & some bad news. The good news is: Vlad figured out my werewolf problem! Basically the situation is there’s a litter of li’l werewolf pups that set up residence in the movie theater.
But here’s the bad news: they’re a bunch of TOTAL STINKIN CUTIES!! Ah jeez!!!
I mean, they’re tearin up all my theater seats & eatin up everything at the concession counter faster ’n I can restock it ... but what am I gonna do? I had to basically kick Vlad outta there when I found out his “silver bullet” for dealin with the problem was a LITERAL silver bullet.
Anyways, after I calmed Vladdy down he said he knew a real smart doctor fella who might be able to help. I guess this guy has a specialty in the “humane disposal of organic material”? Which doesn’t sound any more appealing than Vlad’s approach, but at this point I just need to get Vlad paid & outta my zygomatic process.
Answers to Last Time
The speech I quoted atcha came from Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now show about Joe McCarthy, which was instrumental in the Wisconsin Senator’s political downfall.1
The painting I showed ya yesterday was The Sick Child by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch—who’s of course MOST famous for his painting The Scream.
Today’s Trivias
Trivia 1
What five-letter term refers most generally to any type of mark or device that qualifies a piece of mail to be postally serviced? Most often this’d be a postage stamp or some kinda label that ya print out at the Post Office—but it could also be like a government official’s signature,2 or maybe when an active duty soldier-type writes the phrase “Soldier’s Mail” on some mail.
Trivia 2
The 1963 autobiography What Is Remembered features several cameos from Lost Generation artists like Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, & of course ol’ Ernie Hemingway. The author of that autobiography is also the subject of a different autobiography that was published in 1933.
Who was the author of that earlier (& much more famous) autobiography?
To be clear: I don’t want the name of the author of the autobiography What Is Remembered! I want the name of the author of the autobiography of the author of the autobiography What Is Remembered. Got that? Good.
OK then
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee
1 I ellipses’d out part of his speech in yesterday’s email, but it’s a pretty good read so I’m gonna include it here:
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
2 Fun fact! This privilege (i.e., having just your signature be enough to send out a piece of mail U.S.P.S.) is afforded to every sitting member of Congress—which includes the vice prez of the U.S.A., since that’s who serves the President of the Senate. But the sitting president DOESN’T have this privilege! I dunno, I just find it funny to imagine the president asking the VP to send out a postcard or something on his behalf ’cause he don’t got a stamp handy. ⬏