Joshua Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico; certifiable nut, civic genius, bane of shoddily-dressed coppers and friend to fluffy animals. Most notably though, the only man I've met who is more insanely sane than Prof. Teive himself. Those two used to infuriate each other to the point of . . . well, I'd say 'madness' but both of them left that mark far behind. They used to stay up for days in fiercely competitive games of oneupmanship, each trying to better the other in sheer eccentricity. It was after one of these marathon sessions that Joshua pronounced himself Emperor. I ain't saying there's a connection, but it wasn't the strangest thing I've seen. Why, one morning while we were in San Fransisco hiding out from Transylvanian nobility, that fat braggart Levi Strauss opened his store to find it filled to the ceiling with long grain rice and Teive reclining on it, naked to the world save for a hayseed in his teeth and copper rivets placed strategically over his nipples.
To save a stint in a Californian prison - a fate to which Teive would be particularly ill-suited - I agreed to wear Strauss' new hard-wearing work trousers and had to promise to mention them to Lord Halifax, then Admiral of the fleet, as a possible uniform addition for the tars. I did, eventually, but the old ponce was too busy slurping his wife's tea to take much notice.
To save a stint in a Californian prison - a fate to which Teive would be particularly ill-suited - I agreed to wear Strauss' new hard-wearing work trousers and had to promise to mention them to Lord Halifax, then Admiral of the fleet, as a possible uniform addition for the tars. I did, eventually, but the old ponce was too busy slurping his wife's tea to take much notice.
1 comment:
Thank you for telling me the fascinating and lewd history of those copper buttons on my Levi jeans. You should have taken a tintype of that scene in San Francisco.
....or maybe not.
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