Hiya Skeleton Crew,

So I gotta say, I really enjoy this new newsletter service I’m usin for my emails. But if there’s one downside, it’s that when I was on Substack there was lotsa built-in “share this newsletter with your friends!”–type stuff. & I dunno, maybe all those things were kinda annoying to youse all— but I do think it probably helped get these emails in front of more people’s eyes?

Anyways, it’s gotten me thinkin ’bout ways I can encourage youse all to share this newsletter with friends. SO! If ya forward this (or ANY) of my trivias to a pal, I’ll write you a CUSTOM TRIVIA QUIZ! Let’s say ... six (6) questions on any topic ya want? That seems like a good number.

All ya gotta do is carbon-copy me at mister@skeletontrivia.com on whatever email ya send off to your friend. & lemme know separately if ya want some kinda specific theme for your CUSTOM TRIVIA QUIZ, or else I’ll just whip up six trivias based on whatever’s on my mind that day.

I can also offer other rewards, like maybe I can do requests for whatever movie ya want me to play at the Skeletodeon. I’m pretty open to whatever! I just kinda wanna get the word out ’bout these trivias, & this seems like a more fun way to do that than payin money to ol’ Mark Zuckerberg or Mr. Google or whoever, y’know?

Trivia 1

Something I found out about while I was researchin syllabic abbreviations last time is gramograms, which Wikipedia defines as “a letter or group of letters which can be pronounced to form one or more words.” (Think R U OK for “Are you OK?”)

What early instant messaging app has a three-letter gramogram for its name, which I guess is s’posed to be indicative of its utility in findin friends to talk to?

Trivia 2

There’s a famous artistic gramogram, L.H.O.O.Q., that I didn’t even know was a gramogram until I started researchin this email! That’s because it’s in French, which I don’t really speak so well.

Supposedly L.H.O.O.Q. sorta sounds like Elle a chaud au cul, which means somethin like “She is hot in the arse” (!) in French. The fella who made it artistically famous was one Mr. Marcel Duchamp, who cheekily featured it in one of his “readymades” by writin it underneath a defaced postcard reproduction of what?